HP recovery partition

[gorg]

We got a couple of Compaq nx6325 laptops at work. After i prepared one of them with all programs and stuff we need i wanted to make a ghost image that i can load the others with. The problem is that there is a HP recovery partition that somehow seems to be linked to the C partition which results in ghost images of 15GB.

So i figured i just remove the recovery partition using the included HP tool for this. The partition is gone but the space it occupied on the C drive isnt reclaimed. How can i free this space?

 

[The_Other_One]

Format that partition to NTFS or FAT32? OR there are a few applications that will merge partitions. Ugh, sorry, my mind's blanking out right now, I can't think of the names...

 

[gorg]

I would format and reinstall but there is no OS cd included with the laptops, there is just the recovery partition.

I have tried different programs to merge partitions but since the partition is gone already it doesnt show up in the partition programs. The partition is gone but the space it occupied still isnt free. This is very frustrating.